Radiohead's The Bends gets four stars in Orlando and one in Chicago

Nearly every early review of The Bends measures it against “Creep”. In Germany, Mark Sikora of Spex liked “Creep” a lot and “My Iron Lung” nearly as much, never managed to hear Pablo Honey at one sitting, and found that The Bends at least sent him contentedly to sleep.

Sikora, writing in the March issue, wonders whether Radiohead belong with Oasis, Suede and the Manic Street Preachers. He thinks the album's 12 loud-quiet songs will sell, but finds them neither really interesting, nor important, nor funny.

Ted Drozdowski's review for Rolling Stone, dated 8 March, came before the album's American release. He calls it ambitious, with no easy hits, and thinks success in America possible but a hard stretch. He puts the American success of “Creep” in the summer of 1993 down to luck and lyrics that caught the moment. Thom Yorke's sweet melodies blunt his bitter words, in Drozdowski's view, and obliqueness, which he calls an English habit, weakens songs such as “Bones”.

Capitol released The Bends in America) on 4 April, and the American papers followed. The Orlando Sentinel's unsigned four-star review comes from a critic tired of Pearl Jam imitators, who believes Radiohead's anguish is meant. The record needs a few plays, the Sentinel says, because John Leckie layers the detail thickly, but then the tunes stick. It singles out the feedback storm in “Sulk” and the last chorus of “Just” crashing into its abrupt end.

In The Boston Phoenix, Gary Susman reads the title, the diver's sickness from surfacing too fast, as the band's own sudden rise, and takes “My Iron Lung” to be Yorke on having to play “Creep” over and over. The record proves to him that Radiohead have a life beyond “Creep”, though nothing on it grabs the ear the way it did. He ends with the band wanting to sound like Freddie Mercury and Brian May and coming out like Cheap Trick's Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen.

The Hartford Courant calls Radiohead no one-hit wonder and The Bends the work of a group with depth. The Courant compares it to the Beatles at their most sardonic, bright hooks over dark material, and finds riffs close to the White Album in “(Nice Dream)” and “Just”, though the sound stays Radiohead's own.

Kevin McKeough, in the Chicago Tribune of 27 April, gives it one star of four and doubts the band will be more than one-hit wonders. He pairs “Creep” with Beck's “Loser” as hits for listeners with low self-esteem, finds the guitars on “Bones” and “My Iron Lung” the worst of it, and calls Radiohead alternative rock's answer to the Moody Blues.

Early reviews of The Bends, 1995